Yep. There I go again - takeway piece in the magazine. You’ll need a subscription to read it of course…

Localization UnConferencing: ready, shoot, aim 

I’ve been talking with some folks in the industry and we feel there’s a real need for a Localization UnConference in Europe. Drop us a line if you’re interested or have anything to say on this matter.

Yep, the first Localization UnConference ever was a big success. In true Unconference spirit I didn’t count the exact number of people who turned up, but most who said they would, did (OK, there was about three dozen). The participants included internationalization gurus, linguistic specialists, GMS and localization vendors, freelancers, localization professionals of all types, globalization managers, user experience folks, and so on. A wide community indeed.

This was the real experience - the airing of a range of views that you wouldn’t normally hear - from people you wouldn’t normally hear from - in a non-competitive, open way. A perfect way to spend a Friday away from the office. Nobody complained they didn’t get value for money…:). Nobody played PowerPoint Karaoke. And it was fun too.

(images done using the new free online version of Photoshop).

We ran nine different sessions (3 x 3 concurrently), including ones on the localization challenges of Agile development, community translation, new methodologies, alternatives to the Idiom/SDL toolset (see moderator Adam Wooten’s blog for details), localizing in the age of the perpetual beta, and so on.

Here’s to the next one, and to more UnConferences in the localization/internationalization/globalization space.

Should you ever pay for one? Nah. Why should you pay for your own content?
More coverage on Blogos here and here.

I wanted to thank everyone who came and participated in our experiment last Friday. For a first attempt it seemed to go pretty well. We’ll be posting summaries from most of the sessions over the next few days.

We’d love any feedback you have, good or bad. You can comment here at the blog or send us an email : info at localizationunconference dot com

We have a number of options for getting to the UnConference.

We have a shuttle that runs from our San Francisco office at One Market Street directly to the San Mateo campus. There is a bit of coordination required for you to take that shuttle - so please send us a note if you’re interested.

There is a shuttle that goes from the Hayward Park CalTrain Station to the office park across from ours. You can find the schedule for that service here .

There is also quite a bit of free parking at our office park at 900 Concar Drive in San Mateo.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

If you’ve been waiting to see if anyone else was going to show up before you committed, we’re excited to report that we have an amazing cross section of the industry signed up to attend our UnConference.

We’ve got people from Cisco, DoubleClick, Oracle, salesforce.com, Autodesk, Welocalize, Luz, Moravia, VMWare, Yahoo!, Tibco, Elanex and Arcsight among others.

We still have some time before we need to have a final headcount for meal and resource planning but the sooner you can tell us one way or another - the better.

A few people who’ve signed up haven’t yet logged in to the ideas portal. If you didn’t receive a password, or did and have had trouble signing in, please let us know so we can get it sorted.

Otherwise, get cracking on voting and contributing your ideas! Here’s some of the ideas so far…
S+U

Folks, once you sign up, you’ll receive an e-mail with your user name and password for our UnConference Ideas portal. Log in and contribute ideas or vote on existing ones!  If you don’t get this email - let us know.  Spam filters have been catching these with some regularity.
Some people are having trouble logging in.  We’ve found a work around so if you are unable to log in please send an email to info@localizationunconference.com and we’ll get you sorted.
S+U

When: March 14th. Breakfast and check in between 8 and 9. Unconference proceedings start at 9.

Where: 900 Concar Drive in San Mateo on the campus of salesforce.com

How can I participate? - Sign up here

After signing up you will receive an e-mail confirmation, allowing you to submit your ideas and vote on existing ideas for the UnConference!

Yes, this is going to be where we store all the information about the upcoming Localizaton and Internationalization 2.0 UnConference. And in the true spirit of UnConferencing, we may change the name… it’s case of ready, shoot, aim, really…
So what is an UnConference? Well, see here (Wikipedia reference), and a practical example here (MashupCamp).

After attending Mashup Camp in Dublin, the idea of adopting this approach for localization and internationalization conferences was born…